


Knock Once for the Father

by BloodiedRose



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, The Murdock Family's Guilt Complex, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23606107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedRose/pseuds/BloodiedRose
Summary: Jack does his best after the accident, he really does. But there's only so much he can do.(Jack's POV from Matt's accident to Jack's death)
Relationships: Jonathan "Jack" Murdock & Matt Murdock
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	Knock Once for the Father

**Author's Note:**

> Jack Murdock will kill me always. This was originally meant to be me writing the fic I've been wanting to write for the DD fandom for years, but this came instead. There's never enough Jack fic, right guys? 
> 
> Also, not only is this somehow my first Daredevil fic, it's also the first fic I've written after discovering I can get over my religious guilt around swearing through the use of copy and paste. So this is a milestone in multiple ways!

Jack keeps having nightmares about that moment. He has nightmares about the whole accident, sure, the squeal of tires and loud screams and seeing his little boy lying in the road. The realisation of what Matt was covered in. But it was that moment that seemed to hold a special grip on his brain, pummeling it over and over again. The moment when Matt’s body, unable to cope with what was happening because how could it, gave out and Matt went limp in his arms.

He had been so scared in that moment. It took an entire second for him to realise he could still feel Matt’s breath against his ear, and there was a hell of a lot of time in a second to think that your entire world was dead in your arms. Jack had just kept muttering, trying to tell an unconscious Matt that the ambulance was coming, Jack could hear the sirens, the ambulance was coming and everything would be okay. Matt would be okay.

The ambulance drivers had to pry Matt out of his hands. No matter what he told himself, he still couldn’t let go. 

\---

He’s always known that his kid was a bit on the small side. Matt is as skinny as anything, and like most of the Murdock boys is going to be a short runt until growth spurts hit him and makes him grow like a damn weed. Them not being able to afford clothes that fit Matt properly makes the problem a whole lot more noticable. Jack is used to his boy looking like a wet puppy, is what he is saying.

But nothing compares to how small Matty looks on a hospital bed. Everything is white, except for his pale skin and brown hair, though even that is mostly lost underneath the bandages. God, those bandages. You can hardly see Matt’s face under them because they are that large. And that thick. And God is that-- is that _pus_? Jack is thick as a concrete slab but even he knows that bandages that fresh shouldn’t be _yellow_.

The doctors told him all sorts of things, though only two of those things matter right now-- first, barring massively unexpected complications, Matt is going to live. Second. Jack has trouble breathing because of the second thing. It is his goddamn job, no, worse, because his job is to lose when he’s told to keep scumbags happy, his _reason for being_ is to keep Matty safe. And he failed. 

Some nurse, who probably meant well but really needed to learn how to keep her foot out of her mouth, tried to reassure Jack that this changed nothing. (It does). That Matt would still be able to live a relatively normal life. (Of course he was, because Jack is going to do everything he damn well can to make sure Matt will have prospects, and being blind doesn’t mean anything when you can get out of the gutter). That Matt was still his son. He may have blown up at her for that, the famous Murdock temper breaking out. (But it isn’t temper-- temper doesn’t end with you clinging to the base of your son’s bed sobbing until you can’t breathe),

And he thinks that when Matt woke up they would figure out how to get through this, together, because Matt is a damn smart kid who had always been looking after his Dad instead of letting his Dad look after him. Part of Jack wants that-- for Matt to wake up and somehow have all of the answers, or at the very least not be scared, or in pain, or grieving.

Instead Matt wakes up screaming. Not just scared but _terrified_ , not just in pain but in _agony_ , clawing at his bandaged eyes while also trying to cover his ears, and recoiling from the scratchy hospital bed sheets. Bathed in sweat but already pumped full of as much morphine as his body can take. 

He brings Matt’s hands to his face, because he’s heard of people doing that with blind people sometimes. Not that Matt knows what to do, because he has only been blind a few hours and for most of those had been out, but the skin under his hands seems to calm him. Jack directs Matt’s hands to the scars that Matt had personally stitched up. 

At one point something spikes again and Matt cries out, his fists curling and taking a few bits of Jack’s skin with them as they go. The heart rate monitor hooked up to Matt’s finger is loud and too fast, and Matt doesn’t stop crying. Then it happens again. Matt’s heart rate goes through the roof, his gasps get increasingly high pitched, and then he goes limp. Flat on the bed, out like a light, down for the count. The pain wins the match.

\---

As much as Jack hates when doctors get on their high horses and try to act like they know much better than you (a lifetime in the ring gives you a lot of experience that you won’t get in med school), Jack hates doctors _not_ knowing even more. 

“Your son seems to be experiencing difficulties with his sensory input,” a doctor, one of the older ones because apparently Matt’s situation is too difficult for him to be put with one of the student doctors, explains. “While some degree of this would be normal-- senses often overcompensate when sight is lost, or at least it can feel like they do-- Matthew is experiencing sensory disturbance far beyond anything we have seen.”

‘Sensory disturbance’. Matt is a goddamn sensory mess. Everything is too loud (even breathing), too rough (even if it is meant for babies), and sometimes even the air tasted bad. It is getting difficult to tell how much pain is from whatever had been spilled into his eyes (Jack hasn’t been told what it was, but the doctors look reasonably horrified every time they see the chemical compound and Jack knows what that ‘this liquid is dangerous, do not touch’ symbol means), and what is Matt’s brain no longer being able to process the world around him. 

Jack is starting to wonder if Matt was going to be able to function well enough to even be able to go outside, let alone need one of those sticks to help him around if he does. For one brief moment, in the middle of the night when Matt is going through every prayer he can half remember and screaming his lungs raw, screaming for help even though there is nothing anyone can do, Jack thinks that maybe his nightmares were right. Maybe Matt did die in Jack’s arms. And now he’s in hell. 

The one good thing is that no one tries to split Jack and Matt up. He knows he isn’t supposed to be here all night, but the last time they tried to kick Jack out, just for a physical, Matt went into a full blown panic attack and needed to be sedated. He seems to calm Matty down, even if it’s just his touch or his scent.

But one day even that gets to be too much. Jack hasn’t changed, and his beard has fully grown. He knows he must look a fright, and the nurses don’t seem too comfortable around him anymore. When he wakes up, he goes to give Matt a hug, but instead of relaxing into it like he usually does, Matt turns his head and vomits all over the bed.

“Dad…” Matt croaks out in between heaves. “You stink.”

The nurse smiles at Jack, in the universal ‘sorry, but he’s right’ manner. And yeah, Jack probably does smell all kinds of foul. 

“Go home, Jack,” she says. Jack tries to protest, but she just shakes her head. “You’ve been here for four days. Go home, take a shower or two, get some sleep. Then you’ll be able to make Matt better again.”

He knows that Matt’s going to be spending a lot of that time sleeping, but he can’t bear the thought of his boy needing him and not having him there. Matt’s had to suffer through that a lot in his lifetime and Jack doesn’t want it to ever happen again. But the nurse is right-- Jack can’t even be in the same room without making Matt heave, and they’ve already reached the last of Matt’s stomach contents. Any more and the kid’s going to have even more problems.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay Matty?”

Matt nods, his fists curled in the bed covers. He looks torn, and Jack knows Matt doesn’t want him to go any more than Jack wants to leave. But he can’t be here right now. It doesn’t keep walking out of that hospital from being the hardest thing Jack’s ever done.

Jack cries again in the shower. He’s never been a crier, more of a disciple of the ‘fists, not tears’ school of belief. But he would ask anyone who ever thought that to look at their little boy in the same situation Matt is in, and not wail like a toddler every chance they get.

\---

Jack has to go back to work eventually. He hates every second, wishing he was in the hospital with Matt. But he needs to have somewhere to bring Matt home to and that requires earning his damn living. People like him don’t get the luxury of time off.

The guys get it though, at least. They more than get it. They get him to practice with Rick, the new kid who has already won a few fights. (He’s promising. Jack used to be promising). He and Rick start out just giving each other some glancing blows, some warm ups, but then the kid starts-- well it’s not goading him, exactly, but he does start giving Jack a bit of encouragement.

“It’s okay, Jack,” he says. “I can take it. And we both know you need it.”

Jack starts hitting harder. And harder. Each punch is something else, some other memory of what happened. The squeal of the breaks-- punch. The screams as the truck overturned, and hiding underneath it Jack swears he can hear a small _thump_ \-- punch. Matt clawing at his eyes-- punch. Matt’s screams in the hospital, his pleads for help and for God and for it all just to _stop_ \-- punch. Over and over again.

Rick gets tired out and then it’s Gus he’s treating like a human punching bag. Then Brian. Then Marshall. Fighting his way through all of them, even though his arms feel like lead and he can hardly stand. He collapses, finally, breathing heavily on the mat. He is crying, again, and he thinks he hears someone else sniffling too. 

He can’t go back to the hospital tonight, so they all take him out drinking. Let him curse God, and rich companies, and even his own son for being such a good hearted boy that he runs in front of a truck to push an old man out of the way. Most of all, he curses himself. None of them try to tell him it isn’t his fault, because they know nothing they say will change how he feels. But they listen, and carry him home when he’s too drunk to stand, and he thinks they paid for his drinks but he also has vague memories of the bartender saying that Jack’s drinks were on the house. 

He wakes up holding one of Matt’s toys, which Matt swears up and down he’s too old for but Jack still sometimes finds tucked away in Matt’s bed. Any other night with the guys and he would assume it was a joke, but quite a few of them have kids (hell, Brian’s got himself a whole damn brood) and he knows why they put it there.

He pulls the toy close to him and breathes in his son’s smell. For once, he doesn’t cry.

\---

Slowly, but surely, Matt starts to ease. The doctors aren’t sure if it’s because Matt’s symptoms are getting better, or if he’s just getting better at handling him, but life seems to get easier. Matt can’t wear his usual pajamas any more, but he can wear some Jack bought brand new (Matt immediately starts to ask about the cost, and Jack tells him not to worry about it) that are probably the softest thing Jack’s ever felt. The kid looks outright cozy. 

Matt even gets to the point where people start coming in and teach him how to live his life without his sight. Braille is a whole load of nonsense to Jack but he takes detailed notes of every lesson and tries his best to learn how to do it anyway. He thinks his fingers are too calloused, though. Matt seems to pick it up like it’s a breeze. 

Walking around is, funnily enough, harder. Matt has an eerie sense of where everything is, even more than most sighted people do. He only whacks someone with his cane once, and that’s because the guy was being a prick. But the further they get from Matt’s room, the more they encounter unfamiliar smells, and sounds, and then Matt has to go back because he’s getting overwhelmed again. Sometimes they pace around Matt’s room, but Matt gets so good at it he doesn’t even need the cane anymore, except when there are cables and other things he might trip over on the floor. 

Unfortunately, Matt getting better means they open the door to visitors. They don’t start pouring in but Jack very quickly learns how to recognise a reporter, and how to distinguish the genuinely concerned friends and family from the ones wanting to have a gawk at the blind kid. Brian brings the kids around, and Matt seems to genuinely enjoy being around some actual children for a change. But his oldest girl, Lucy, who they all used to joke was sweet on Matt, gives him a handmade card covered with crayon drawings and get well wishes. That’s when Jack realises his kid is a phenomenal actor, because while the adults in the room get awkward Matt just thanks her and accepts the card.

“Hey Luce, you have any of your glitter pens on you?” Jack asks. She is looking sadly at the card, having realised her mistake too late. She nods, and reaches into the pockets of her dress to pull three out in wildly different colours. Jack picks up the card and whispers in her ear to go over the letters in glitter, as carefully as she can. She looks confused but nods, tracing over each letter with intense concentration. Matt tries to talk to her a bit while the card is drying, and she even holds his hand for a second. Brian gets the same grin on his face that they usually would when the two were being cute, but to Jack it looks a hell of a lot deeper than that.

When the glitter dries, Jack gets Matt to try and trace it with his fingers. It doesn’t work perfectly, but Matt can at least understand some of it, and he gets the smallest smile on his face as he goes. Lucy gets a not so small smile on her face and by the time they leave she is still looking like if she smiles any wider her mouth will fall off.

\---

It takes a couple of weeks, but the old guy Matt saved comes to visit. He brings with him his wife, and they both look like they’re breaking in two when they walk in and see Matt. They bring with them a whole bunch of things, including baking and a quilt and, annoyed as Jack is to admit it, a genuinely thoughtful gift of a case of cassettes from when they would sit at home and record radio dramas. 

The old man tries to hold it together, but the survivor’s guilt gets the better of him and he ends up breaking down, apologising over and over. Matt just looks awkward. He tries to tell them that it’s okay, that he’s glad the man was safe, but everyone knows only part of that is true. 

Jack tries to be polite, because his mama raised him to be polite at all costs, but he does a poor job of hiding that he doesn’t want them there. Every time he looks at the man he just sees how old he is, seventy-two in fact, and how-- God forgive him-- he would give almost anything for the man to have died and his boy to have been safe. To their credit, the couple seem to know. And not even for a second do they blame him for it.

\---

It was inevitable that the lawyers would come. Men in fancy suits, with slicked back hair and large black briefcases knocking on his door. He knows who they work for, so he doesn’t let them in. Even so, he gets a contract shoved under his door. He takes it down to one of the pro bono guys that Gus used when he got busted for possession. 

The lawyer says he doesn’t know much about corporate law, but he knows enough. Knows that the contract will pay for everything disability related for the rest of Matt’s _life_ , so long as they sign an ironclad NDA and never bring it up again.

“They’re low-balling you,” the lawyer says. He’s a good guy, doing what he can even if it means nothing. “This isn’t even a settlement. They’re banking on you being so focused on the blind stuff that you won’t fight it. If they’re going to give you hush money they should at least make it worth a damn.”

“What if I just take the money?” Jack asks.

“Murdock, you sue and they are _finished_. No one is going to forget the company that blinded a kid because they were transporting dangerous chemicals in an urban area. During peak _traffic_. You have their balls in a vice! Even suggest you are suing and this turns into a quarter, half-mil easy. Hell, they might even give you a few mil if you really raise a stink. They will do anything to make you go away.”

And yeah, Jack knows that. And Jack knows that what the company was doing stinks to high heaven. No way were they legit. And the thing is, Jack knows what happens to people who go against companies that aren’t legit. Sure, they might give him and Matt a lofty sum of cash. Or they’re going to figure that a boxer single dad and his blind son, living in the rough parts of New York, are awfully easy to get written off in a B&E or mugging gone wrong. They have no moral qualms about blinding a kid. Why the hell would they stress about murdering one.

\---

The day Matt comes home, it’s like their floor is holding a parade in celebration. All day the doorbell is rung by people bearing all sorts of gifts, usually of the edible variety. They run out of freezer space by mid-day, so Jack has to accept that he and Matty are going to be mostly eating desserts for the next few weeks. Some people bring other foods, though, like the Chinese couple down near the stairwell who Jack has never really talked to but bring a whole bunch of dinner foods with actual meat and vegetables, and Gran Hooper who took one look at the basket of cupcakes Jim and Anna-May gave them and comes back with enough stews to feed an army at Christmas. 

Jack is very grateful, because God knows Jack isn’t the best at cooking wholesome meals at the best of times, and he and Matty have lost a lot of weight after the accident and neither of them had that much to spare. But it gets too much very quickly and at one point Jack just sticks a piece of paper to the door saying that people should come back tomorrow. 

They eat a dinner of a pork dish and a generous helping of blueberry pie, both because Matt deserves it and because, quite frankly, anything less means nothing is going to get eaten.

“Does everything taste okay, Matty?” Jack asks, because Matt’s sense of taste was just as fragile as his other senses. Matt nods around a mouthful of pie.

“They use vegetables from that shop around the corner. It doesn’t use sprays.” Matt takes a giant gulp. “The pie, too. Things at the hospital taste like you’ve tried to drink shampoo.”

“Yeah, hospital food is always sh- rubbish.” Matt just laughs at his attempts not to swear. “I’ll ask the Zhous where they get their groceries.”

The Zhous turn out to be lovely people. They lost their daughter to pneumonia when she was only four, so they get it at least a little bit. Even if it does mean that Xiumei becomes yet another one on the list of women in Hell’s Kitchen determined to feed Matt every chance they get. (Matt had an uncanny ability to make women want to take care of him, long before the accident. Jack didn’t tell anyone how willing his son was to take advantage of that affection).

What happened to Matt manages to get them really personal with most of their neighbours, and closer to the ones they were friendly with before. There is always a babysitter if they need it, and everyone keeps a close eye on when Jack has a match so that they can do another restocking of the Murdock fridge (even though the freezer is just getting progressively more and more full). 

The problem with getting to know your neighbours is that there’s always the risk of finding out something you wish had stayed buried.

\---

Matt has a lot of nights where he can’t sleep. Nights where everything is too loud, or too scratchy, and he just can’t shut it off. Sometimes, when it’s really bad, Matt comes crawling into his bed. Jack always holds Matt as close as he can without cracking Matt’s ribs on those nights. He knows Matt only comes to him when Matt’s really desperate, instead of when he’s just suffering. Stupid catholic boys.

But one night Jack gets up to go to the toilet, and Matt is standing in the middle of the living room. He flinches, every so often, and Jack recognises those flinches. Those are the flinches Matt would do during action movies, every time someone landed a particularly nasty punch.

“Stop it,” Matt is muttering. “Stop it, please stop, it hurts--”

“Matty!” Jack reaches over and grabs Matt by the shoulders. Matt’s head snaps up, and he goes rigid. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s hitting her,” Matt croaks. 

“What?”

“The guy upstairs, he-- she burned dinner. She burned dinner and it was all they had so he--” Matt cuts off with a scream, flailing in Jack’s grip like he’s trying to duck. “Help. Help, help, help me, help me, you have to help her, Daddy you have to help her.”

Jack takes Matt’s arm and walks them to the front door, and down the hall to number 3. Mr Ruiz worked nights his whole life, and even now that he’s retired he still can’t sleep a wink until 8 am. 

“Sorry, sir,” Jack says. “Matt heard something coming from upstairs, and I have to go have a look.”

“He’s hitting her,” Matt says in between sniffles. Then he yelps again, clutching his arm as if he was the one who has been hit. Mr Ruiz’s face hardens.

“I’ll call the police,” he says. “And take care of the little one.”

Jack gives Matt a quick kiss on the head, and nods his thanks to Mr Ruiz. Matt is still flinching every few moments, and if he’s flinching everytime this son of a bitch lands a blow then this poor woman must look like mince meat by now. 

It’s not fury, when he bangs on the door to the apartment above theirs. It’s too cold to be fury. It’s like those moments in the ring, those moments that scare the hell out of him even more than it scares the people who are fighting him. He’s letting the devil out.

The guy who opens the door isn’t noteworthy, but they never are. _He_ has anger painted all over him, in his huffing breaths and taught shoulders. Jack can hear stifled sobs coming from further inside the apartment. He probably told her to be quiet.

“The hell you want?” The guy asks. Jack doesn’t answer. He grabs the guy and shoves him up the wall, and when he tries to fight back Jack decks him a couple of times. They’re punches that would have earned him quite a few admiring noises in the ring. He thinks he’s breaking the guy’s nose.

The girl runs out and-- the sight of her makes him hit harder because who the hell can do that to another human being? To someone who isn’t being paid to fight back? But she starts screaming and pulling him off her-- boyfriend? Husband? Regular old scumbag? 

Jack lets go of him, whoever he is. He slides down the wall, head lolling on his shoulders. And then-- Jack should have seen this coming, honestly-- she turns.

“Who the _fuck_ do you think you are?” She asks. She begins slapping at Jack’s chest, and she hits hard. “What have you done to him?!”

“Getting him off you,” Jack grunts. That does not calm her down.

“You should mind your own fucking business!”

Jack doesn’t tell her that if he had minded his own business, from the looks of things, she would have been spending tomorrow in a morgue. And every day after that in a grave. She shoves him out of her apartment, screaming obscenities at him, and funny how _that_ gets people opening their doors but not the woman screaming so loud that a nine year old could hear her from the floor below. 

Jack waits for the police to arrive, and then has to spend all of the unholy hours of the morning explaining the situation. His side of the story is obvious, because all she says is that they should all get out even though the longer he stays there, the worse she looks. But her husband (as she has confirmed) gets up and starts yelling about Jack, or as the guy refers to him ‘that psycho’, and things get a whole lot messier. Eventually they have to talk to Mr Ruiz, and one of the officers says that they need to talk to Matt. At that point, everything shuts down, because no one wants to involve the blind kid. Jack just wants this entire mess staying as far from his boy as possible.

In the end, the guy gets arrested. Jack doesn’t. The wife doesn’t file charges, so he’s back again in a few days.

Rinse and repeat.

Matt asks him, curled up on the couch while the unhappily married couple scream at each other above them, why she would go back to him.

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “Maybe she thinks she can deal with it. Maybe she’s still in denial. Or she could not have a choice-- especially if he earns all the dough.” Jack sighs. “Maybe she just loves him more than she hates him.”

“Is that why Gran never left your Dad?” Matt asks. Not casually as if it is an everyday thing, but in the same way he talks about the accident. Just a simple fact of life.

“We can never know why people do the things they do, Matty. Which is why we have to try and help them anyway.”

\---

That night, he dreams about the day he finally pummeled his Dad’s face in. But unlike that night, his Mom never pulls him off. She doesn’t throw water in his face and kick him to the curb. Instead she lets him keep hitting, and hitting, and hitting. And then it’s not his Dad under him anymore, but Matt, small and broken with his blank eyes darting around the room as if his ears can’t pick up where the sensations are coming from. Jack picks up a bucket and douses his son’s face in acid.

Jack wakes up screaming, honest to God screaming. Matt’s on his bed, shaking him and Jack instinctively gathers Matt in his arms and just holds him tight. He buries his face in his son’s neck and tries to remember that Matt isn’t dead, and that Jack has never beat him, has never even got the urge to give him a good spanking, because he isn’t his Dad. But his brain won’t listen to him, it’s too busy chanting _your fault, your fault, your fault_. 

Matt falls back asleep, in spite of his efforts, but Jack doesn’t. Jack just holds his son and watches the sun rise.

\---

Things are going remarkably well. Matt’s coping with life far better than Jack thought he would, even in his most optimistic moments. Some days, to the untrained eye, you could be fooled into thinking that Matt still had sight. He even seemed to have fewer nightmares than Jack (though any time a car’s breaks squealed Matt would freeze and, if it was bad enough, Jack would have to carry him home) and steamrolled through _law books_ with that braille of his. Matt had even managed to start back at school.

But then Sweeney had to come along. Say those things about Matty, then offer Jack the fight of his dreams, and then dash those dreams by making him promise the outcome before he had even gotten into the ring. Jack had thrown fights before, but they were small time. This was an actual goddamn _match_. He could win it, too. It crushes him that he wouldn’t even get the chance.

\---

Matt knows. Jack doesn’t know how he knows, but clearly that accident made the kid psychic or something. He stares his kid in the face, listens to him quote law books about rising against fear and then listens to him practically state the family motto.

_“We always get up.”_

And nobody gets up quite like Matty. Who got up without a Mom, then got back up blinded, then stayed up in spite of whatever weirdness happened in that accident (Jack’s not stupid, he knows Matt isn’t normal. If he’s not psychic, then he’s got super hearing, in which case his boy really got the short end of the super power stick). And Jack is nothing compared to that.

And he knows how to rig the game. Use it to get Matt enough money to, if not get him through life, at least get him with a foot on the road. It’s a bad idea, a stupid and prideful idea, and Jack should know because he’s had a lot of them. But even more than wanting not to fail for once in his life, Jack wants to get out. Get out from under Sweeney’s thumb, even if he and Matt have to leave New York. 

But who’s he kidding. He’s not getting out of this. Even if he does go down in the fifth, there’s going to be something, somewhere, that he just can’t do. He’s already had his days as a hired thug and-- Matt will know. He will always know. Jack doesn’t want his boy to know that he’s a crook. He doesn’t want to keep being a crook. He doesn’t want to feel like he’s dirtying his son every time he touches him. 

So he calls Maggie. She doesn’t pick up the phone, and the messaging machine is years old but she always said that if he has to contact her, that’s the number to call. But he knows her. Sure, he’s had his time hating her guts for leaving Matt (and sometimes him as well), but he knows why she did it. And honestly he prefered Matt grow up without a mother than grow up with a mother who didn’t want to be one. He knew firsthand how that broke you in two. 

But she’s a good woman. A woman of God, apparently (he’s not sure-- he doesn’t get a lot of contact with nuns). She will take care of Matt. He knows she will. He prays she will. Hopes? Yeah. She’s his only hope.

\---

The night before the big (final) match, Jack stays up reading to Matt. It’s not one of Matt’s law books but an actual kid’s book, filled with jokes and magic and perfect opportunities for Jack to do funny voices that make Matt giggle. They eat the last slice of another pie in bed, and it’s a good night. Jack wants Matt to remember a good night.

Matt falls asleep quickly, and Jack watches him for a few more hours. He wants to stay here forever, thinks about forgetting the money and just taking Matty and running. They would be dead in a week. The problem is that Matt’s bed is too small, especially for two people, and his pillow while perfect for a ten year old boy gives a thirty-two year old man serious neck problems by the morning. Jack needs to get some rest before tomorrow. If he doesn’t win this game, then he’s going to…

Then it’s all going to be for nothing.

He kisses Matt goodnight. Then again. And again, and again, and if Matt was awake it would be a joke where Matt protested while his Dad smothered him in smooches. He takes the time to tell Matty how much he loves him, how proud he is just for Matt to keep breathing. That’s probably going to get a lot harder soon. But Matt’s going to have his Mom. He’s going to have a better life, with a bit of money and a parent who can actually take care of him, instead of a crooked cheat who would let him run ahead when they were walking home from school. And it’s Matt-- he’s going to get back up.

\---

He wins the match. He gets into his street clothes. Hell, he makes it to the alley next to his apartment. He begins to hope, begins to think that maybe he and Matt are going to get out of this okay--

He almost makes it.

\---

It’s ironic (is it? Jack could never figure that one out) that the only time Brian could ever beat him is because he had a gun. Jack wants to feel angry-- and he is, at Sweeney because that bastard couldn’t even do the dirty work himself, and instead had to hire it out to Jack’s best friend-- but he gets it. Alice lost her job a couple of months back and isn’t doing so good at getting a new one, and they have five mouths to feed. He can’t help feeling betrayed, though, because if this goes to plan then Brian’s family are going to get a come up while Jack’s--

No. He can’t think like that. This is for the best. This is to give Matty the life he deserves. 

Brian’s hands are shaking while he holds the gun. He’s got a mask on, too, and Jack is somewhat offended by the cowardice. He’s known Brian since they were kids; a mask can’t hide what he looks like. Jack stares him in the face, and Brian doesn’t like that. Brian yells at him to get on the ground. Jack Murdock isn’t going to die like a dog. He should just let Brian shoot him in the back, because that’s what he’s doing.

Jack thinks about Matt, who if those Murdock genes kick in is about to have his first growth spurt soon. It’ll probably make him skinnier. He hopes the kid fills Maggie in on all of his taste mumbo jumbo. They’ve figured out a system for it, so she should be fine. Unless Matt’s powers--

_(And holy shit._

_Jack’s son has superpowers)._

\--get stronger, which they might because that kid’s got to hit puberty sometime and when he does, who knows what will go off-kilter. And Matt’s growing out of those sunglasses. Soon he’s going to need new ones. And a haircut. Matt definitely needs a haircut. But maybe when he’s older-- Jack likes being able to ruffle his boy’s hair.

Brian turns the safety off. Well, at least he is making sure not to shoot just anyone. 

Now, Jack has never been much of a Catholic. His Mom was, because she needed something to rant about when she’d been drinking. And it would always be about how her husband was the devil, which turned into her sons were the devil, and then it was just genetic. Jack had thought only Pete had believed what she’d said, the note he left behind certainly implied it, but Jack had bought it hook, line, and sinker. Or maybe he didn’t. He didn’t think his brother was the devil, and he sure as hell doesn’t think his boy is. That’s why the second he heard her saying that shit to his son, he made sure that she never saw his boy again. He still went back, though, when he felt like he needed a good whipping.

The accident sure as hell didn’t make Jack any more Catholic. People tried to tell him that what happened to Matt was part of a divine plan, but Jack doesn’t want anything to do with someone who punishes a boy so brutally for trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t care if the accident was the turning point between Matt-the-serial-killer and Matt-the-nobel-prize-winner. 

But he prays now. Prays for Matty, because it’s the only thing he has worth praying for. Prays that his boy will grow up happy, with a loving Mom and no more getting thrown out of apartments barely fit for human living. And he prays that Matt has a good life, but more than anything that he has a happy life.

Jack doesn’t want to die. He wants to go home and be with his son.

What has he done?

He prays that Matt will forgive him.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are welcome!


End file.
